Introduction

Open access (OA) to research publications brings with it significant benefits for UK institutions, researchers and research funders.

After several years of concerted effort to implement OA in the UK, following the Finch report in 2012, we have learned, and continue to learn, a great deal about what works well, and what works less well.

Levels of open access implementation

This varies from institution to institution. To reflect this, this document aims to provide ‘something for everyone’ offering potential activities to those at the very beginning of their OA journey as well as those who are more advanced.

this document aims to provide ‘something for everyone’

Notably, the steps outlined here are a deliberate mix of interventions, some of which are wide ranging necessitating high levels of planning and resource, and some smaller incremental changes in order to offer potential solutions to all institutions, no matter how far along with OA implementation they find themselves.

Who is this guide for?

For anyone who is involved in open access implementation or who has an interest in OA more generally.

Do a baseline assessment

Why would you do this?

To understand where to concentrate necessarily scarce resources, institutions need to know which aspects of the implementation of OA would most benefit from their attention.

How much effort is it?

Carrying out baseline assessments on how prepared and ready institutions and researchers are for OA compliance should require their involvement in jointly conducting these exercises; for instance through a workshop facilitated by the institution.

Develop a communications plan

Develop a clear and effective advocacy/communications strategy with researchers, which helps them understand the opportunities and obligations of OA.

As part of this put in place a standard email mechanism, for example: [email protected].

Why would you do this?

To ensure researchers are aware of the benefits of OA and are actively involved in OA workflows which are interconnected with the institution’s OA policy and related processes.

To ensure that the institution’s professional OA services offer clear benefits to researchers.

To make it easier for academics, publishers and others to contact the right unit at the institution - for example: academics could contact the institution for support in implementing OA, which will enhance relationships between academics and professionals; publishers might provide institutions with information about publications. Jisc and other service providers can do the same.

How much effort is it?

Not trivial; likely to need expert professionals visiting academic departments, research institutes, etc, and having discussions with academics about their concerns, awareness, obligations, etc

Technically straightforward to set up the email address, but will require a time and resource commitment to set up the triage and workflow arrangements that would be needed to make it work

One of its many benefits, this allows institutions to manage better workflows around OA, for example, the implementation of offsetting agreements with publishers of hybrid journals, and to handle REF returns for researchers who move between institutions.

Jisc has made it easier for UK institutions to join ORCID and to get the full benefits of it via the national consortium agreement.

How much effort is it?

Joining the consortium is relatively straightforward, with low costs based on Jisc bands

Integration with local systems depends on what you want to achieve, but is likely to involve:

How much effort is it?

Assessing the implications of the OA policy landscape for a particular paper is unlikely to be a straightforward or error-free process, but it can be done. Using Sherpa/FACT is the easiest way to do this.

Ensure your repository has the right technical capacity

Why would you do this?

A standard way of recording information relevant to compliance with OA policies, from REF, RCUK and the EC, makes the management and reporting burden easier.

RIOXX has been developed with those funders to enable this process for UK institutions, and can now be implemented in most repositories and many current research information systems (CRISs).

Standard metadata also makes research papers and research data easier to discover, and so it increases its visibility and potential reach.

OA content is most visible and usable when aggregated. This also offers the potential for analytic services, eg policy compliance tools.

CORE is the UK open access aggregation service. It supports such tools, for example, passing UK RIOXX records to the EC OpenAIRE service, making UK Horizon 2020 research projects compliant with the EC OA policy.

How much effort is it?

Technically straightforward to implement the RIOXX metadata profile in most repositories and in some research information systems, though some platform versions and local customisations might require some additional work and systems updates

Changing workflows to provide the information needed by RIOXX takes more effort, but it will be needed in some form to prepare for reporting on OA policy compliance

Apart from RIOXX, it is technically straightforward to ensure correct harvesting by CORE, requiring some technical configuration of the repository / CRIS

Record details of all article processing charges (APCs) paid in a standardised way

This will aid reporting and analysis.

Why would you do this?

Recording APC data enables the institution to account to funders for this expenditure. This is also vital information where APC payments are offset against subscriptions in agreements with publishers, directly saving money for institutions.

Jisc has worked to develop a single agreed format for this reporting

APC data has to be reported to several funders, including Research Councils UK (RCUK), the Wellcome Trust and other medical charities. Jisc has worked with them to develop a single agreed format for this reporting. This, therefore, reduces the administrative burden for institutions.

How much effort is it?

In principle using a single format is relatively straightforward, and is less cumbersome than what would be needed for many formats.

However, ensuring that all APCs paid from an institution are recorded centrally is a significant challenge, as many APC payments may be made from departmental or project budgets.

Changes might be needed in APC payment workflows, which will require discussion with academics and academic departments to raise awareness of the issues involved.

Share article-level APC data

Why would you do this?

A new market is emerging for OA article publication. Open APC data makes this market as transparent as possible, and therefore of most benefit to customers (institutions). Institutions and authors can then benchmark the APC costs they face against those faced by others, or for other journals. There is no legal reason not to do this.

Open APC data makes this market as transparent as possible, and therefore of most benefit to customers

Recognising the sector-wide value of this data and its potential effects on the market, our Jisc Monitor project is developing a UK aggregation which will aggregate APC data from institutions.

How much effort is it?

Providing the data is recorded, it should require a relatively low time commitment to share the data. Many institutions already share this data on Figshare.

Where to get more information and support

Implement “copy request” button in your repository

Why would you do this?

This is to enable potential readers to access research outputs from your institution, even if they are not currently OA. This should lead to greater readership of outputs from your institution, to wider reach and potentially to increased impact.

This will also alert researchers to unmet demand for their papers, and so encourage them to make more of them OA.

How much effort is it?

Technically straightforward for many, but not all, repository configurations. However, researchers would need to be asked to expect and act on requests passed via the button. This might be particularly difficult for older papers recorded in the repository.

It is possible that a view on legal risks might need to be taken by the institution, though these seem to be very low.

Where to get more information and support

Download data available to IRUS-UK

Ensure download data from your repository/CRIS is available to IRUS-UK by installing the tracker code. Or ensure that your supplier does the same.

Why would you do this?

Being able to record download data and to view reports of these, eg compare them with other repositories or compare them by journal title, offers insight and demonstrates the reach of the repository and the institution’s research.

How much effort is it?

Technically straightforward; most eligible institutional repositories have already taken this step. It involves adding a small piece of tracker code into the repository.

Where to get more information and support

Further information

The value of OA is becoming clearer, but there remain many routes to achieving it.

A key role that institutions can play, as well as benefit from during this transitional period, is to join local, national and international discussions on OA implementation and best practice. There are many ways to do this.

About the authors

Head of scholarly communications support, Jisc

Neil is head of scholarly communications support for Jisc. He was formerly programme director of information environment (IE) work overseeing a variety of projects and programmes in the areas of access to and management of digital resources.

His work covers the issues of technical interoperability, cultural and organisational change, sustainability and business models in relation to Jisc’s digital infrastructure work in linked data, digital repositories, scholarly communications, and research information management.

Scholarly communications services manager, Jisc

My role is to manage the open access (OA) good practice initiative that aims to help reduce the burden on higher education institutions (HEIs) in implementing funders’ OA requirements. This is achieved through enabling universities, working with others both within and beyond the sector, to develop improvements in IT tools, standards and services, and the related workflows and organisational arrangements for OA implementation.